Hearing set in 2008 child abuse homicide case

ST. GEORGE – A hearing has been tentatively scheduled for November to determine if evidence collected during a St. George infant's autopsy is sufficient to continue planning a trial in a child abuse homicide case filed six years ago in 5th District Court.

Gregory Todd Fullerton, 36, was arrested on the first-degree felony charge, which could result in a life sentence if he is found guilty, after the 4-month-old boy died in July 2008.

Progress in the case has been slow, and former case Judge G. Rand Beacham, who retired in 2012, once described the development of evidence as "both glacial and tortuous."

Beacham's successor, Judge Jeffrey Wilcox, received the case in April and called a hearing Thursday to review its status.

Pendleton obtained permission from the court last year to seek a medical expert witness who could bolster the defense's arguments against the prosecution's medical expert findings, but who would be paid for by the state.

He received a report from his expert, a Minnesota medical examiner, last month and due to an oversight only shared the information with the prosecution Wednesday, he said.

The prosecutor is out of town and was represented Thursday by Deputy County Attorney Rick Erickson, who asked Wilcox to set up a hearing on the report and Pendleton's efforts to challenge prosecution witnesses "as soon as possible" given the age of the case.

Wilcox scheduled a full-day hearing on one of two dates during the week before Thanksgiving, pending confirmation from the defense witness that she can appear in the St. George court at that time.

The infant victim at the center of the case had been left in Fullerton's care by the boy's mother while she was at work, and was alive but severely injured when he arrived at Dixie Regional Medical Center.

He was declared dead shortly after being flown to Salt Lake City to receive specialized treatment.

Fullerton posted bail two months later and since then has appeared in court at the average rate of about once a year as Pendleton has challenged medical experts to identify a specific, actionable allegation regarding the boy's cause of death.

Pendleton argues the coroner's finding that the boy died of "abusive head trauma" fails to prove what the cause of the head trauma was or even that a crime took place.

Utah Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Edward Leis, based in Salt Lake City, has testified more than once during the development of the case that the boy could not have inflicted the severity of the injuries he experienced on himself through a casual accident, such as a fall from a bed the boy reportedly had days before his death.

Leis said the injuries would be more comparable to a child falling from the height of a few stories, being in an automobile accident or pulling a heavy object over on top of himself — something that the 4-month-old couldn't do.

"The hypothesis which Dr. Leis offered … is completely untested," Pendleton stated in his motion to preclude or limit the testimony last year.

Leis has also testified abusive head trauma has become the term accepted in professional medical circles for the examination of injuries that were formerly identified as the result of "shaken baby syndrome."

The terminology changed to focus on the physical condition rather than attempting to define a limited potential cause of the condition, he said.

Beacham found the abusive head trauma explanation to be sufficient reason for proceeding to trial based on Fullerton's alleged admission that he flipped the infant around on a bed and pressed on his back to stop him from crying, until he heard a "snap."

Fullerton reportedly told police investigators about the incident, but Pendleton has argued Fullerton's statements were made under pressure following misleading and grooming statements by the investigators and were improperly interpreted by Leis as a confession Fullerton didn't intend and doesn't admit to.